The Deep Time Trap

Abstract

This article argues that Lorine Niedecker’s 1968 poem “Lake Superior” reveals a limitation of recent scholarly investments in the concept of geological “deep time.” “Lake Superior” is a meditation on deep time; the Europeans who colonized the Great Lakes; and Lake Superior’s assemblage of rocks, bodies, and bodies of water across timescales. In analyzing Niedecker’s poem alongside her research notes, this article claims that, even as the speaker’s invocation of deep time troubles settler-colonialist historical narratives, she nevertheless remains mired in what Mark Rifkin calls “settler time.” The poem’s geological timescale fails to liberate the speaker from a settler-colonialist representation of and relation to the environment. While many scholars contend that deep time offers an alternative to anthropocentrism, this article argues that deep time is also a colonialist construct that can reinforce harmful Western epistemologies and obscure non-white ways of relating to the environment. Indigenous scholarship and activism offer alternative timescales that might allow us to care for the environment without minimizing the interconnectedness of human and nonhuman beings, without relying on settler-colonialist logics, and while centering Indigenous knowledge and sovereignty.